Re: forget to take critical thinking in school?
on 11/30/2012 17:26:21 MST

"Personally I don't care, I'm signed up for the rapture, and will sit up there laughing at all the non believers when they scrabble around their toasted planet looking for another fillup for their rusting suvs."

Given that heat rises, I think I'd rather be down in he!! looking up thru all those non believers at all you rapturists jumping around like cats on a hot tin roof, trying to keep your Birkenstocks from scorching. ;0)

On a slightly more serious note, I find it disturbing that the discussion is so totally focused on climate change that acidification of the oceans is barely a blip on the radar. It is as great a threat to our existence as climate change, starting with the threat to the phytoplankton that produce ~40% of the oxygen we breathe and provide the most basic prducer link in the oceanic food chain. If the climate warms, we are are in trouble for all the reasons discussed; if the climate cools the oceans cool and absorb even more CO2, leading to even lower pH levels. Either way, we screwed. :(

Tom, you are exactly right, these wasted bits and bytes online in fact do tend to obfuscate the character of the growing problems globally, problems, it's worth noting, that are not secrets or hidden at all. The most astute are noting that the actual problem is not climate change, but the failure of the infinite exponential growth model, but that goes way beyond what people who can't even follow relatively simple science that is purely empirical can grasp, so I'll leave that one alone.

The best use of a thread like this is to educate and expand awareness of the issues, it's actually sad to have to waste even a second on the denialist nonsense, but my feeling is they are losing the race, actually I think they've already lost it, and are now just floundering wildly in a vain attempt to keep believing that things will remain as they were because, well, because that's how people want them to remain.

Here's a good one, A LNG tanker just completed its trip from Norway to Japan, in Winter, over the Arctic. Link is in norwegian, sorry, but you can find the story on google news too. Ice thickness averaged 40cm, about 10 inches. One icebreaker was used to accompany. This is the first time in human history I believe this has occured in winter. One thinks of the bunker fuel residue darkening the ice and increasing melt next summers season, but hey, they saved 20 days off the trip.

As to your comments about the rapture, I'm not certain, but I believe I will be positioned high enough above the earth to avoid the heat upsurge, but I'll consult with the Jehovah's Witnesses re climate change and heat entering the land of the chosen. I'm feeling solid about it myself.

Stuff is hitting fast and hard now though, this Nova episode, Drilling in the Ice - it's a video, so even people who have a hard time processing text data should be able to sort of follow it, though it uses some big words, but I think the basic ideas are not so hard to grasp. Drill hole in ice, down through water, then drill into sediment layer to get core samples going back millions of years, can't remember the exact number, it's an ongoing process. Brrr, cold down there.

Now, personally, I don't fall for any of that nonsense, I know perfectly well that God placed every molecule and radioactively decaying particle everywhere in order to test my faith, and to catch up the doubters and skeptics, and I'm for one glad they are all getting tricked by this obvious shell game, there's, if the Jehovah's Witnesses are right, only 144,000 available seats for the elect, so the more of you suckers that get pulled into false beliefs the better is what I say, lowers the competition.

However, I do take heart that even the denialists can't keep up with the rates of change in the data, it's hard to spin webs of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, when people begin to see the stuff with their own eyes, that leaves really only the most clueless followers as the base.

By the way, am I the only one to note that God hates the Midwest and Southeast, which, even now, as we speak, are still in drought conditions, in winter? Clearly he is annoyed at hypocrites who take his name in vain, I know if I were him, those sleazy suburban mega churches so popular in the midwest would make me want strike down with thunderbolts and lightning, with a vengeance, you know, cherish and care for the earth, and all that stuff. His attempt to clean up NYC is easy enough to understand as well, of course. However, I see this all as just removing the non select from the pool, sort of a tidying up, a pre rapture type thing is my guess, though who am I to put motivations into the divine's mind? All I can do is note his actions.

"The most astute are noting that the actual problem is not climate change, but the failure of the infinite exponential growth model, but that goes way beyond what people who can't even follow relatively simple science that is purely empirical can grasp, so I'll leave that one alone."

Anybody who ever watched what happens to a petri dish full of agar agar inoculated with bacteria or mold, in a high school biology class can grok the failure of the infinite exponential growth model. Inoculating with fruit fly eggs and then covering the dish with a screen cage is even more graphic. ;)

"By the way, am I the only one to note that God hates the Midwest and Southeast, which, even now, as we speak, are still in drought conditions, in winter? Clearly he is annoyed at hypocrites who take his name in vain, I know if I were him, those sleazy suburban mega churches so popular in the midwest would make me want strike down with thunderbolts and lightning, with a vengeance, you know, cherish and care for the earth, and all that stuff. His attempt to clean up NYC is easy enough to understand as well, of course. However, I see this all as just removing the non select from the pool, sort of a tidying up, a pre rapture type thing is my guess, though who am I to put motivations into the divine's mind? All I can do is note his actions."

On the off chance there actually is a divinity, I doubt very much he/she/it follows our antics on a daily basis. At best he/she/it may check back in a million years or so, note the planet has been reduced to a cinder and, with a shrug, say, "well, that one didn't turn out so well, time to get back to the lab and give the cetaceans real hands". ;0)

Re: Re: forget to take critical thinking in school?
on 12/04/2012 04:56:26 MST

Tom says: I find it disturbing that the discussion is so totally focused on climate change that acidification of the oceans is barely a blip on the radar. It is as great a threat to our existence as climate change, starting with the threat to the phytoplankton that produce ~40% of the oxygen we breathe and provide the most basic prducer link in the oceanic food chain. If the climate warms, we are are in trouble for all the reasons discussed; if the climate cools the oceans cool and absorb even more CO2, leading to even lower pH levels. Either way, we screwed. :(

I find it disturbing that you spout this alarmist bullcrap only a few months after Roger Caffin and I demonstrated to you that the computer models your alarmism is based on aren't worth the bytes they're built out of.

Harald Hope says:Even today, climate scientists consistently miscalculate the worst case scenarios (ie, the worst cases are consistently proving to be the actual case, which means they are being consistently conservative)

The latest paper on the contribution of polar ice melt to sea level rise is from Andrew Shepherd and a slew of the worlds top experts in the field. They have finally reached consensus on the question, and find that the contribution is... wait for it.... since 1993.. twenty years ago...

Half an inch.

Have you got that Harald?

Half an inch of sea level rise in twenty years due to all the melt-off from Antarctica and Greenland.

> If it's half an inch in the last 20 years, and the rate increases as the CO2 levels> rise and polar regions warm, in 100 years we could have significant increaseWe might, but how much?Let's see: 100 yrs is 5x 20, but lets allow for a greater rate as well and say 10x. That's 5 inches. Hills indeed.

But that makes several assumptions, all of which may be false:1) That there is a huge (unlimited) reservior of ice available. Given that much of the Arctic has already melted in the first 1/2", plus many ice shelves from the Antarctic have also fallen off, this may be debatable.2) That melting ice can contribute all that much compared to tectonic plate movement. It would seem (on geological evidence) that opening and closing of rift valleys, both on land and in mid-ocean, may be 10x or 100x more significant.

I am not arguing for or against the possibility of sea level change, just pointing out that there are more global players than melting ice.

By the way, just to help things along, I notice that it now seems that the Australia/India plate, which is heading north into Asia and forming the Himalyas, may be cracking in half midway between Australia and India. If that happens, I wonder what the consequences will be?

"Let's see: 100 yrs is 5x 20, but lets allow for a greater rate as well and say 10x. That's 5 inches."

I wonder how much that would increase the surface area of the oceans. What I'm concerned about is increased surface area = increased CO2 absorption = lower pH = problems at the low end of the food chain. If the climate warms there will be more surface area and thus more CO2 absorbed, if the climate cools the oceans cool and can absorb more CO2. Either way, it poses a serious problem. There will be a chorus of nay sayers proclaiming that there is no proof, to which I reply that we only have one planet, and it behooves us therefore to err on the side of caution.

25 inches if it was 10X like you said - that would make many areas uninhabitable

calculating how much total ice there is is pretty straightforward, would be much more like 60 feet or something? They have looked at recent geological evidence to verify this from recent ice ages.

techtonic movements are pretty slow, and changes very slowly, so it would be easy to look at geological data to see if this was important

"I am not arguing for or against the possibility of sea level change, just pointing out that there are more global players than melting ice."

If you're saying it's too complicated to be sure of anything, I'll agree with you. I just hate to see us continuing to pump CO2 into atmosphere at ever increasing rate until it does become clear, because there's no proven way to remove it from atmosphere. We are part of huge science experiment.

Jerry says:we need no growth in human population. And argueing about validity of evidence that we've seen any effect yet is less important.

We should halt human progress, restrict peoples right to self determination for themselves and their future families and huddle in the dark because there might be an effect in the future from something we've seen no detectable effect from in the past?

What kind of argument is that?

"We shouldn't go outside the cave in case the sky falls on us"

I'll go with confidence into a future where we develop new rocket engines and explore the cosmos thanks.

It isn't clear exactly how many people the earth can sustain, but the more people, the harder it is to resolve any of these problems like CO2 in the atmosphere or running out of water, food, other resources...

It's called a Ponzi Scheme when exponential growth is required to sustain a system

"think CO2 absorption is limited by how much the water will absorb. More surface area would make it happen faster."

Yup, and the cooler the water, the more the water can absorb; so, even if warming turns out to be a false alarm, the pH of the oceans will continue to drop if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase. It puzzles me how a genius like Rog has so much difficulty with this relatively well understood process.

"By the way, just to help things along, I notice that it now seems that the Australia/India plate, which is heading north into Asia and forming the Himalyas, may be cracking in half midway between Australia and India. If that happens, I wonder what the consequences will be?"

More than likely there'll be a very audible flushing sound as Australia swirls its way pell mell down Gaia's crapper.

The good news is that it should compensate nicely for that alarmist 5" rise in sea level. ;0)

"By the way, just to help things along, I notice that it now seems that the Australia/India plate, which is heading north into Asia and forming the Himalyas, may be cracking in half midway between Australia and India. If that happens, I wonder what the consequences will be?"